<p>Booting from the <uri link="http://www.knoppix.org/">Knoppix</uri> LiveCD is a way to have a fully functional linux system while you're compiling Gentoo. Tux Racer will help you pass the time while you wait for bootstrap.</p>

108

109

<p>Boot from the Knoppix CD. It generally does a really good job of hardware detection. Although, you may have to add some boot options. </p>

110

111

<p>By default Knoppix boots into a KDE 3.0 desktop. The first thing I did was open a konsole and typed <c>sudo passwd root</c>. This lets you set the root password for Knoppix.</p>

112

113

<p> Next, I su to root and typed <c>usermod -d /root -m root</c>. This sets user roots home directory to /root (the Gentoo way) from /home/root (the Knoppix way). If you do not do this, then you will receive errors when emerging about "/home/root: not found" or something to that effect.</p>

114

115

<p>I then typed <c>exit</c> and then <c>su</c> back into root. This loads the change that was made with the usermod command. At this point, you can pick up with the standard install documentation at step 6. However, when you're asked to mount the proc system, issue the following commands instead: </p>

<p>Follow all instructions of Gentoo Install Doc up to <c>chroot /mnt/gentoo</c> in Step 8. If you only have one CD-ROM remember to use the <c>cdcache</c> option while booting so you can unmount the LiveCD and mount your portage snapshot CD.</p>

308

309

<p>Run <c>passwd</c> and set a new password for root. Open a new virtual console (Alt-F2) and login as root with your new password.</p>

310

311

<p>On the new console (F2) continue with the Install Doc up to running the bootstrap.sh script.</p>

312

313

<p>Go back to the first console (Alt-F1, without chroot) and mount a second CD on <path>/mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2</path>. Copy the portage tarball from cdrom2 and unpack it to <path>/mnt/gentoo/usr/portage</path>. Further, grab the dl-list.sh script and place it in <path>/usr/sbin</path> and make it executable.</p>

<p>Switch back to the F2 console. Now if you try to run bootstrap.sh it will fail because it won't be able to download any files. We will fetch these files somewhere else and put them in /usr/portage/distfiles (on F2 console). </p>

<p>Take the floppy to the computer that has fast access and feed this list to wget:</p>

342

343

<pre caption="Use wget to grab your source packages">

344

# <i>wget -N -i stage1.list</i>

345

</pre>

346

347

348

<p>Once you have obtained all the files, take them to the computer and copy them to <path>/mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles</path>. You will then be able to run <c>bootstrap.sh</c>. Repeat this same wget fetch and place procedure for stage2 and 3.</p>

349

350

351

352

</body>

353

</section>

354

</chapter>

355

356

<chapter>

357

<title>Netboot install</title>

358

<section>

359

<title>Requirements</title>

360

<body>

361

<p>The requirements for a netboot install are a host computer than can

362

provide a tftp server and a computer

363

that can netboot itself via either bios or a floppy drive used to boot GRUB

364

or another network bootloader. A dhcp server might also be necessary. Of

365

course, you will also need the latest build ISO, which can be found at

<note>You can also use bootp and dhcp to configure your ip via grub. Use the bootp

509

and dhcp commands.</note>

510

511

<p>Now that you have your machine booted, you can install as normal. Refer to the

512

from source cd install howto.</p>

513

514

</body>

515

</section>

516

</chapter>

517

518

<chapter><title>Diskless install using PXE boot</title>

519

520

<section><title>Requirements</title>

521

<body>

522

<p>You will need a network card on the diskless client that uses the PXE protocol to boot, like many 3com cards. You will also need a BIOS that supports booting from PXE.</p>

523

</body></section>

524

525

<section><title>Server base setup</title>

526

<body>

527

<p>Create directories: The first thing to do is to create the directories where your diskless system will be stored. Create a directory called <path>/diskless</path> which houses a directory for each diskless client. For the rest of this howto we'll be working on the client 'eta'.</p>

528

529

<pre caption="directory setup">

530

# <i>mkdir /diskless</i>

531

# <i>mkdir /diskless/eta</i>

532

# <i>mkdir /diskless/eta/boot</i>

533

</pre>

534

535

<p>DHCP and TFTP setup: The client will get boot informations using DHCP and download all the required files using TFTP. Just emerge DHCP and configure it for your basic needs. Then, add the following on <path>/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf</path>.</p>

536

537

<note>This provide a static IP address for the client and the path of a PXE boot image, here pxegrub. You have to replace the MAC address of the Ethernet card of the client and the directory where you will put the client files with the one you use.</note>

538

539

<pre caption="dhcp.conf">

540

option option-150 code 150 = text ;

541

host eta {

542

hardware ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00;

543

fixed-address <c>ip.add.re.ss</c>;

544

option option-150 "/eta/boot/grub.lst";

545

filename "/eta/boot/pxegrub";

546

}

547

</pre>

548

549

<p>For TFTP, emerge <c>app-admin/tftp-hpa</c>. In <path>/etc/conf.d/in.tftpd</path>, put the following :</p>

550

551

<pre caption="in.tftpd">

552

INTFTPD_PATH="/diskless"

553

INTFTPD_USER="nobody"

554

INTFTPD_OPTS="-u ${INTFTPD_USER} -l -vvvvvv -p -c -s ${INTFTPD_PATH}"

555

</pre>

556

557

<p>Setup GRUB: To provide PXE booting I use GRUB. You have to compile it by yourself to enable the PXE image compilation ... but that's quite easy. First, get the latest version of the GRUB source code (<c>emerge -f grub</c> will place the tarball in <path>/usr/portage/distfiles</path>). Copy the tarball to <path>/diskless</path> and then build it to make the pxe capable binary. Once the binary is built, copy it to the diskless client's boot directory. Then edit it's grub.lst config file.</p>

558

559

<pre caption="grub setup">

560

# <i>tar zxvf grub-0.92.tar.gz</i>

561

# <i>cd grub-0.92</i>

562

# <i>./configure --help</i>

563

<codenote>In the options you will see a list of supported network interface drivers. </codenote>

<codenote>For the nfsroot option, the IP address is the one of the server and </codenote>

581

<codenote>the directory is the one where your diskless client files are located (on the server).</codenote>

582

</pre>

583

584

<p>Setup NFS: NFS is quite easy to configure. The only thing you have to do is to add a line on the <path>/etc/exports</path> config file :</p>

585

586

<pre caption="/etc/exports">

587

# <i>nano -w /etc/exports</i>

588

NFS file systems being exported. See exports(5).

589

/diskless/eta eta(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

590

</pre>

591

592

<p>Update your hosts: One important thing to do now is to modify your <path>/etc/hosts</path> file to fit your needs. </p>

593

594

<pre caption="/etc/hosts">

595

127.0.0.1 localhost

596

597

192.168.1.10 eta.example.com eta

598

192.168.1.20 sigma.example.com sigma

599

</pre>

600

</body>

601

</section>

602

603

<section><title>Creating the system on the server</title>

604

605

<body>

606

607

<p>Reboot the server on a Gentoo LiveCD. Follow the standard install procedure as explained in the Gentoo Install Howto BUT with the following differences. When you mount the file system, do the following (where hdaX is the partition where you created the /diskless directory). You do not need to mount any other partitions as all of the files will reside in the <path>/diskless/eta</path> directory.</p>

608

609

<pre caption="mounting the filesystem">

610

#<i> mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo</i>

611

</pre>

612

613

<p>Stage tarballs and chroot: This example uses a stage3 tarball. Mount <path>/proc</path> to your diskless directory and chroot into it to continue with the install. Then follow the installation manual until kernel configuration.</p>

614

615

<warn>Be very careful where you extract your stage tarball. You don't want to end up extracting over your existing installation.</warn>

616

617

<pre caption="extracting the stage tarball">

618

# <i>cd /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/</i>

619

# <i>tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/gentoo/stage3-*.tar.bz2</i>

620

# <i>mount -t proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/proc</i>

621

# <i>cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/etc/resolv.conf</i>

622

# <i>chroot /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/ /bin/bash</i>

623

# <i>env-update</i>

624

# <i>source /etc/profile</i>

625

</pre>

626

627

<p>Kernel configuration: When you do the <c>make menuconfig</c> of your kernel configuration, don't forget to enable the following options with the others recommended into the install howto.</p>

628

629

<pre caption="menuconfig options">

630

- Your network card device support

631

632

- Under "Networking options" :

633

634

[*] TCP/IP networking

635

[*] IP: kernel level autoconfiguration

636

[*] IP: DHCP support

637

[*] IP: BOOTP support

638

639

640

- Under "File systems --> Network File Systems" :

641

642

&lt;*&gt; NFS file system support

643

[*] Provide NFSv3 client support

644

[*] Root file system on NFS

645

</pre>

646

647

<p>Next configure your diskless client's <path>/etc/fstab</path>.</p>

648

649

<pre caption="/etc/fstab">

650

# <i>nano -w /etc/fstab</i>

651

/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0

652

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

653

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

654

</pre>

655

656

<p>Bootloader. Don't install another bootloader because we already have one - pxegrub. Simply finish the install and restart the server. Start the services you'll need to boot the new client: DHCP, TFTPD, and NFS.</p>

657

658

<pre caption="Starting services">

659

# <i>/etc/init.d/dhcp start</i>

660

# <i>/etc/init.d/tftpd start</i>

661

# <i>/etc/init.d/nfs start</i>

662

</pre>

663

664

</body></section>

665

666

<section><title>Booting the new client</title>

667

<body>

668

<p>For the new client to boot properly, you'll need to configure the bios and the network card to use PXE as the first boot method - before CD-ROM or floppy. For help with this consult your hardware manuals or manufacturers website. The network card should get an IP address using DHCP and download the GRUB PXE image using TFTP. Then, you should see a nice black and white GRUB bootmenu where you will select the kernel to boot and press Enter. If everything is ok the kernel should boot, mount the root filesystem using NFS and provide you with a login prompt. Enjoy.</p>

<p>In order to install Gentoo from your existing Linux distribution you need to

679

have chroot command installed, and have a copy of the Gentoo installation

680

tarball or ISO you want to install. A network connection would be preferable if

681

you want more than what's supplied in your tarball. (by the way, a tarball is

682

just a file ending in .tbz or .tar.gz). The author used RedHat Linux 7.3 as the

683

"host" operating system, but it is not very important. Let's get started! </p>

684

</body>

685

</section>

686

687

<section> <title> Overview </title>

688

<body>

689

<p>We will first allocate a partition to Gentoo by resizing our existing Linux partition, mount the partition, untar the tarball that is mounted, chroot inside the psuedo-system and start building. Once the bootstrap process is done, we will do some final configuration on the system so as to make sure it boots, then we are ready to reboot and use Gentoo. </p>

690

</body>

691

</section>

692

693

<section> <title> How should we make space for Gentoo? </title>

694

<body>

695

696

<p>

697

The root partition is the filesystem mounted under <path>/</path>. A quick run of mount on my system shows what I am talking about. We well also use df (disk free) to see how much space I have left and how I will be resizing. Note that it is not mandatory to resize your root partition! You could be resizing anything else supported by our resizer, but let's talk about that later.</p>

698

699

700

<pre caption="Filesystem information">

701

# <i>mount</i>

702

/dev/hdb2 on / type ext3 (rw)

703

none on /proc type proc (rw)

704

none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)

705

none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

706

# <i>df -h </i>

707

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

708

/dev/hdb2 4.0G 1.9G 2.4G 82% /

709

none 38M 0 38M 0% /dev/shm

710

</pre>

711

712

<p>As we can see, the partition mounted as <path>/</path> named <path>/dev/hdb2</path> has 2.4 gigabytes free. In my case, I think I will resize it as to leave 400Megs free of space, therefore allocating 2 gigabytes for Gentoo. Not bad, I could have quite some stuff installed. However, think that even one gigabyte is enough for most users. So let's partition this thing! </p>

713

714

</body> </section>

715

716

<section> <title> Building parted to resize partition </title>

717

<body>

718

<p>Parted is an utility supplied by the GNU foundation, an old and respectable huge project whose software you are using in this very moment. There is one tool, however, that is extremely useful for us at the moment. It's called parted, partition editor and we can get it from <uri>

Documentation that accompanies the software package and insert a new floppy in

743

the drive for the next step. </p>

744

745

<note> Note again that Linux is synonym of "There's one more way to do it". Your

746

objective is to run parted on an unmounted partition so it can do its work. You

747

might use some other boot/root diskset other than tomsrtbt. You might not even

748

need to do this step at all, that is only umount the filesystem you want to

749

repartition in your Linux session and run parted on it. </note>

750

751

<pre caption="Utility disk creation">

752

# <i>mkfs.minix /dev/fd0</i>

753

480 inodes

754

1440 blocks

755

Firstdatazone=19 (19)

756

Zonesize=1024

757

Maxsize=268966912

758

</pre>

759

760

We will now proceed with the build of parted. If it's not already downloaded and untarred, do so now and cd into the corresponding directory. Now run the following set of commands to build the utility and copy it to your floppy disk.

Congratulations, you are ready to reboot and resize your partition. Do this only

770

after taking a quick look at the parted documentation on the GNU website. The

771

resize should take under 30 minutes for the largest hard-drives, be patient.

772

Reboot your system with the tomsrtbt boot disk (just pop it inside), and once

773

you are logged in, switch the disk in the drive with your utility disk we have

774

created above and type mount /dev/fd0 /floppy to have parted under /floppy.

775

There you go. Run parted and you will be able to resize your partition. Once

776

this lenghty process done, we are ready to have the real fun, by installing

777

Gentoo. Reboot back into your old Linux system for now. Drive you wish to

778

operate on is the drive containing the partition we want to resize. For

779

example, if we want to resize /dev/hda3, the drive is /dev/hda

780

</p>

781

782

<pre caption="Commands to run once logged into tomsrtbt system">

783

# <i>mount /dev/fd0 /floppy </i>

784

# <i>cd /floppy; ./parted [drive you wish to operate on]</i>

785

(parted) <i> print </i>

786

Disk geometry for /dev/hdb: 0.000-9787.148 megabytes

787

Disk label type: msdos

788

Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags

789

1 0.031 2953.125 primary ntfs

790

3 2953.125 3133.265 primary linux-swap

791

2 3133.266 5633.085 primary ext3

792

4 5633.086 9787.148 extended

793

5 5633.117 6633.210 logical

794

6 6633.242 9787.148 logical ext3

795

(parted) <i> help resize </i>

796

resize MINOR START END resize filesystem on partition MINOR

797

798

MINOR is the partition number used by Linux. On msdos disk labels, the

799

primary partitions number from 1-4, and logical partitions are 5

800

onwards.

801

START and END are in megabytes

802

(parted) <i> resize 2 3133.266 4000.000 </i>

803

</pre>

804

805

<impo> Be patient! The computer is working! Just look at the hardware LED on

806

your case to see that it is really working. This should take between 2 and 30

807

minutes. </impo>

808

809

<p>Once you have resized, boot back into your old linux as described. Then go to

810

<uri link="/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml</uri> and follow steps 6 through 17. Don't forget to create the <path>/mnt/gentoo</path> directory before proceeding with step 7. In step 8 you have to download the requested stage-tarball as we're not working from a LiveCD. When chrooting, use the following command to flush your environment: